His announcement comes a week after U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson warned Oakland officials that the city has failed to meet the terms of a consent decree to reform the department in the wake the "Riders" scandal, in which several officers were charged with beating or framing drug suspects in West Oakland in 2000. As a result, the judge said the city faces court intervention that could amount to a finding of contempt or a takeover by federal receivership.

"Although the Court hopes that Defendants are able to turn this tide in the next several months without further judicial intervention, it remains prepared to take appropriate further corrective action if necessary," Henderson said in the proceeding last week.

i am very possibly moving to oakland for a few months. would def appreciate any decent quotes on rent prices. i'm looking for a shared house on the cheap in a neighborhood that's at least like a 2.5/10 on the safety scale, and i'm trying to avoid any gentrificationy situations. i am pretty broke all the time. friend of a friend who lives there says he works one day a week as a waiter and has no trouble paying for rent/groceries but we don't believe him.

uh yeah spring for an extra $100 and move somewhere you're less likely to to be mugged. stay away from fruitvale area; I have gentrification-averse friends there too and they are leaving after people got murdered outside their house.

I actually find the whole proposal slightly offensive. If you're going to move into any area, you will still be you regardless. You can't control peoples' perceptions of you and your intentions for living in that place. When my wife and I left our Adams Pt apartment to own in North Oakland, a white neighbor came by not long after moving in and in the course of our conversation called us "pioneers". I took offense, thinking that made our neighbors (many of whom have roots in this neighborhood going back at least a couple of generations) something else. Saying you don't want to gentrify a place just by you being there seems like the same type of thinking, coming from the opposite side. Live where you want to live, live where you can afford to live, live where you feel safe living, but accept your own presence in your community.

Sorry if this isn't clear, and if I've got the whole notion wrong, maybe we can hash that out too.

def look at the crimespotting map, and the map on akm's link. Fruitvale by and large will be fine, even much of west oakland will probably suit your needs. The deep east has alot of problems, crimewise, mostly due to gang turf wars.

Fruitvale by and large will be fine, even much of west oakland will probably suit your needs.

Probably transportation (what form you will have and what form you will need) should be a major factor in deciding where to live. Also, having your bike stolen or car stolen/broken into is a rite of passage as far as Oakland residency goes.

zachlyon, i don't know where you're coming from... but if you can afford anything up to $600/month, you'll be fine. i've never paid more than 430$ in oakland. i currently pay $330, i'm very close to BART, and my neighborhood is safe enough. (i also most work odd-jobs and shit, haven't had a 'real' job in more than a year, partly by choice and partly because the economy blows).

no offense, T, but didn't some dude get gunned down right around the corner from your place, like, a couple months ago? And the little kid that got shot in the parking lot, that was right by where you live too, right?

yeah, but in his defense (or in oakland's defense?) most people would consider where i used to live (around the corner from the parkway) "safe enough," and a dude got gunned down in the grocery store parking lot a block or so away, police once cordoned off an entire street because a gunman had taken hostages in a nearby apartment building, my apartment got broken into and robbed, and the video store on the corner got held up multiple times.

have paid in the $550 - $1000/mo. range for any number of neighborhoods ranging from 'desirable' to 'risky' and have seen/heard people shot and killed in all of them, on the street, on the doorstep, next door, around the corner, etc. so I don't really know how this is measured?South Berkeley/Oakland border was the only one where this didn't happen actually.